lol I survived my first mission. Just a courier mission. I successfully landed at the destination. Then I went to get a new mission and there are all sorts of news items, factions wanting stuff. No clue. So I thought I would pick up another simple courier mission to system GS 319. Launch myself. Now how to I navigate there.

Shit. I have no clue. I guess I will have to jump to a system that is closer. At this point the navigation planner is basically telling me 'ya can't get thar from hare'.

So I decided to see if jumping closer to GD 319 would help open up routes. It didn't. lol. Something else to figure out (there is no shortage). So I decided to just land at a small settlement to refuel. Bad idea.

The settlement was on a planet and I successfully got into the atmosphere only to realize that I came down to far away from the settlement. Getting to the actual settlement was a slow, slow process. Once I got there it was restricted with no place to land. I think I got a 1000 fine for trespassing. lol. Now I am off to a city.

So I took a mission that I had to drop some information off a planet side station. It took me a really long time to figure out how to approach the station. Once you enter the gravity well (is this the right term?) of the planet you are very limited in your speed. Coming into the planet on the right side was not easy. I had to leave orbit a couple of times in order to figure out how to get close to the station. Took me about an hour to figure it out but I finally landed and successfully completed my mission.

The only times I've had my systems shut down are either because I've overloaded the powerplant (because I didn't set up my power management properly) or was in combat and my power plant must have took a hit, which offlined my systems. Cue 30seconds (which seemed longer) in a spinning Vulture, desperately trying to reboot systems as I watched my hull get chipped away by enemy fire.

I've never had my systems randomly shut down before otherwise. That's mildly terrifying.

I have had my cockpit blown out in combat and had the 10minutes on my life support to get safely to dock. When you've no cockpit, your HUD is missing. That makes docking quite a tense experience, especially with the life support timer ticking down.

Nope, the cockpit being cracked open isn't instantly fatal. Some ships have got more vulnerable cockpits than others (such as the Vulture) and flying with those ships can sometimes be..............breezy.

I gave up the ghost once my flight stick and throttle refused to load, and I couldn't figure out the issue.

Which HOTAS were you using?

The game does appear to have gotten better with being more accomodating of different HOTAS setups and the default profiles for each stick seem pretty well thought through. Of course the issue at the other side is the software for the stick itself, which seems to be all kinds of nightmarish no matter what brand you use.